SUNY-Albany and University of Maryland

[starbucks_lattie]

I realized that there was a thread earlier asking about SUNY-Albany admission. Any heard back from the program regarding funding yet?

Assuming that I will get funding from SUNY- Albany. I don't really know what to choose between Maryland and Albany.

It seems that Maryland has stronger demography program while SUNY has two professors that I would really like to work with.

Does SUNY-Albany have good reputation in its demography field? I don't have background in sociology, I would really appreciate any information.

Thank you in advance for reading it!

[chedan007]

I think.... professor is more important

[jacib]

I am probably of the opposite opinion. Professors are important, but they also transfer schools, retire, go on sabbatical, and (G-d forbid) get sick or die. There is a thread called where a lot of people discuss what is influencing their decision. At my school, many students have switched topics, etc. so that who they came in here interested in working with isn't always the same as who they end up working with. I've met other people who have the same topic, but ended up having a better relationship with a different professor than the one they initially came here to work with. I know I came here only to work with one professor, but there are probably now three or four more who I additionally really like working with. I know one girl whose major subfield is one that no one in our department works on. She is very happy with her decision to come here, and can't imagine herself anywhere else (she actually is now working closely with at least three professors who like and support her project).

It also depends where you want to be, for both the course of your program and afterwards. Visit both if you can, and see where demography PhD's from both Albany and Maryland got jobs (ask those two professors where ALL their recent advisees got jobs for the past... oh five to ten years).

Also if you stiill have access to journals etc. through your undergrad institution's library, you can look up advisers on ProQuest's Digital Dissertation Database (if you don't know how to access it, email your school's librarian) and that will also tell you the names of specific people's previous students in case they "forgot" any one (the search function is actually less than perfect, especially for adviser) and then you can google them and find out where they got jobs.

[starbucks_lattie]

I am probably of the opposite opinion. Professors are important, but they also transfer schools, retire, go on sabbatical, and (G-d forbid) get sick or die. There is a thread called where a lot of people discuss what is influencing their decision. At my school, many students have switched topics, etc. so that who they came in here interested in working with isn't always the same as who they end up working with. I've met other people who have the same topic, but ended up having a better relationship with a different professor than the one they initially came here to work with. I know I came here only to work with one professor, but there are probably now three or four more who I additionally really like working with. I know one girl whose major subfield is one that no one in our department works on. She is very happy with her decision to come here, and can't imagine herself anywhere else (she actually is now working closely with at least three professors who like and support her project).

It also depends where you want to be, for both the course of your program and afterwards. Visit both if you can, and see where demography PhD's from both Albany and Maryland got jobs (ask those two professors where ALL their recent advisees got jobs for the past... oh five to ten years).

Also if you stiill have access to journals etc. through your undergrad institution's library, you can look up advisers on ProQuest's Digital Dissertation Database (if you don't know how to access it, email your school's librarian) and that will also tell you the names of specific people's previous students in case they "forgot" any one (the search function is actually less than perfect, especially for adviser) and then you can google them and find out where they got jobs.

Thank you for your good advice Jacib! I still haven't made my decision yet. I feel like Mary has great location as it is close to DC but Albany has professors that i would like work with. Albany definitely has a better research fit. However, I would like to work in the think-tank type of organization after I graduate, Maryland may seem a better option...

[RefurbedScientist]

Also if you stiill have access to journals etc. through your undergrad institution's library, you can look up advisers on ProQuest's Digital Dissertation Database (if you don't know how to access it, email your school's librarian) and that will also tell you the names of specific people's previous students in case they "forgot" any one (the search function is actually less than perfect, especially for adviser) and then you can google them and find out where they got jobs.

@jacib-- Wow, that's an amazing tool and I've never thought to search for dissertations by advisor. This will be hugely helpful to me, as I'm trying to make a decision between two programs, and it's coming down to this sort of really in depth research. The two biggest factors are (a) where do grads get jobs and (b ) what kinds of dissertations to my POIs usually advise (e.g. methodologically, paradigmatically, publication journals, etc.)

Anyway, thanks for sharing this advise.

Edited March 26, 2012 by SocialGroovements

[jacib]

@jacib-- Wow, that's an amazing tool and I've never thought to search for dissertations by advisor. This will be hugely helpful to me, as I'm trying to make a decision between two programs, and it's coming down to this sort of really in depth research. The two biggest factors are (a) where do grads get jobs and (b ) what kinds of dissertations to my POIs usually advise (e.g. methodologically, paradigmatically, publication journals, etc.)

Anyway, thanks for sharing this advise.

Yeah the thing is 1) I think you need institutional access to use the database, though that might not entirely be the case. I don't know, I always access it through the library. 2) In most cases that I've tried at least, if you search by adviser you get what people have chaired, but you can't search by committee very well (though often times the committee is listed on the first page, it's generally not included in search by "adviser"--though confusingly sometimes it is). 3) The search for advisers is not that reliable. Searching my adviser "First Name Last Name" turns up a few hits, but searching simply "Last Name" turns up about twice as many of my adviser's former students, but I don't know if turns up all of them them, though it also definitely turns up a bunch of people in engineering or something who had an adviser of the same last name. Which means it's probably easier to find most of Michael Buraway's students than most of William Julius Wilson's. 4) In addition, it's really good for finding the range of projects potential advisers have advised. My adviser, it turns out, has advised several pretty random projects, which I like. 5) It's good for finding out what unpublished work is happening in your subfield right now--the key word search is actually quite good 6) The coolest thing is that you can look up famous faculty members' dissertations! I recommend everyone look at the abstract of Andrew Abbot's thesis, I thought it was hysterical.